Elephant Teeth

“An elephant grows, loses, and regrows five sets of teeth in a lifetime. When the sixth set is regrown and then lost, the elephant starves to death.”

— random fact found on the Internet

The circus elephant
had thought about it
for years, imagining
the last tooth falling from her head
while she stood absurdly balanced
on some red white and blue footstool.

When it finally happened,
in a railroad car trundling between
one three-day stand and the next,
she barely noticed. One minute
it was there and the next — gone.
She missed the tiny clink of it
hitting the shit-stained floor.

Walking down the ramp
to the holding yard, she felt hungry
but kept her mind off that
by calculating the hours
and the number of shows
she had left in her — soon enough there’d be
no more footstools and foofy feathers,
no more chain around the leg, no more
patience needed.

She knew the bullet
would come first, well before
she fell wasted to her knees and rolled over into
the savanna sleep she’d wanted
for so long, but she didn’t mind:

any savior is welcome
to a circus elephant
who (for much of her life)
stood on one leg
and danced for children
in the stink of a tent for hours at a time
waiting for the next train ride, the next
dull meal, the next illusion of home
glimpsed through the slats of a boxcar
moving through Kansas.